Ah Ah: Conscience Letters and Photographs from the Haleakala & Hawai'i Volcanoes National Parks
Edited with photographs by Ryan Thompson.
The sequel to Bad Luck, Hot Rocks includes more rueful letters from repentant tourists, this time on stealing lava rocks from Hawai‘i
Following a trail of regret from the Petrified Forest (the subject of his classic Bad Luck, Hot Rocks) to the islands of Maui and Hawai‘i, artist and educator Ryan Thompson considers the implications of another trove of handwritten apologies, this time from the archives of the Haleakala and Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Parks. Written to accompany chunks of volcanic rock and other objects that tourists have pilfered from the Islands and subsequently returned (because of bad luck or bad conscience), the notes and letters express not only a need for forgiveness but also an awareness of the writers’ relationship to the Hawaiian landscape, and perhaps also to earth itself—a taking-and-returning phenomenon that (as noted in his earlier book) is its own form of absolution and self-help. Ah Ah weaves together Thompson’s own black-and-white travelog with vibrantly colored “portraits” of the returned specimens and facsimiles of selected letters into an endearing reflection on humanity’s troubling (but hopeful) entanglement with geology, colonialism and tourism in the Anthropocene. Ryan Thompson lives and works in Chicago, where he is an artist and associate professor of art and design at Trinity Christian College. His ongoing Department of Natural History projects engage a range of complex and peculiar relationships between humans and the natural world. He is the coauthor of the bestselling photobook Bad Luck, Hot Rocks.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Ah Ah: Conscience Letters and Photographs from the Haleakala & Hawai'i Volcanoes National Parks.'
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As we head into peak tourism season, we’re taking a page from Ryan Thompson’s smile-inducing new release, Ah Ah: Conscience Letters and Photographs from the Haleakala & Hawai'i Volcanoes National Parks, the follow-up to Thompson's 2014 best-seller, Bad Luck, Hot Rocks: Conscience Letters and Photographs from the Petrified Forest, also published by The Ice Plant. Pictured here, a note from a tourist whose regrettable impulse at the Chain of Craters Road lava flow in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park has done enough post-holiday damage to warrant return postage to the Big Island. Perhaps the thief caught wind of the “apocryphal story of a curse wrought by Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and fire, on anyone who removes volcanic rocks from Hawai'i,” Thompson writes. Or perhaps it’s “simply a desire to return something that the letter writers later felt was not theirs to take.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 6.5 x 9 in. / 128 pgs / 62 color / 16 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $29.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $42.95 GBP £24.99 ISBN: 9798985733044 PUBLISHER: The Ice Plant AVAILABLE: 7/2/2024 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA UK EUR ASIA AFR ME
Ah Ah: Conscience Letters and Photographs from the Haleakala & Hawai'i Volcanoes National Parks
Published by The Ice Plant. Edited with photographs by Ryan Thompson.
The sequel to Bad Luck, Hot Rocks includes more rueful letters from repentant tourists, this time on stealing lava rocks from Hawai‘i
Following a trail of regret from the Petrified Forest (the subject of his classic Bad Luck, Hot Rocks) to the islands of Maui and Hawai‘i, artist and educator Ryan Thompson considers the implications of another trove of handwritten apologies, this time from the archives of the Haleakala and Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Parks. Written to accompany chunks of volcanic rock and other objects that tourists have pilfered from the Islands and subsequently returned (because of bad luck or bad conscience), the notes and letters express not only a need for forgiveness but also an awareness of the writers’ relationship to the Hawaiian landscape, and perhaps also to earth itself—a taking-and-returning phenomenon that (as noted in his earlier book) is its own form of absolution and self-help. Ah Ah weaves together Thompson’s own black-and-white travelog with vibrantly colored “portraits” of the returned specimens and facsimiles of selected letters into an endearing reflection on humanity’s troubling (but hopeful) entanglement with geology, colonialism and tourism in the Anthropocene.
Ryan Thompson lives and works in Chicago, where he is an artist and associate professor of art and design at Trinity Christian College. His ongoing Department of Natural History projects engage a range of complex and peculiar relationships between humans and the natural world. He is the coauthor of the bestselling photobook Bad Luck, Hot Rocks.
